Ten  Cents  a  Copy 


Two  Dollars  a  Year 


A  WEEKLY  MAGAZINE 


October   U,  J906 

jjt   i*  gl 
SURVEY  OF  THE  -WORLD 

Mf.  Roosevelt  on  the  Control  of  Corporate  Wealth—  Pacification  in  Cuba 
—  Palma's  Early  Plea  for  Intervention  —  Lynch  Law  in  the  South— 
The  Conflict  of  Races  in  Hungary  —  The  Fragments  of  the  Turkish 
Empire  —  New  Zealand  Labor  Laws  —  British  Labor  and  Politics. 


Impressions  of  Musical  America     .....  VINCENT  d'INDY 

The  Surrender  of  Yorfctown  (Poem)     .     .     .     LEWIS  W.  SMITH 
A  Litany  of  Atlanta     .     .     .     .     *  W.  E.  BURGHARDT  DU  BOIS 

The  Orchard  in  October  .........  E.  P.  POWELL 

The  Kronstadt  Fiasco  .......      KELLOGG  DURLAND 

Westminster  Waiting  for  the  Session      .     .    JUSTIN  McCARTHY 
Joseph  (Poem)       .......  SARAH  JEANNETTE  BURKE 

A  Medical  Specialty  for  Women   ....      HENRY  T.  FINCK 

The  Future  of  Liberia       ....     SIR  HARRY  H.  JOHNSTON 

The  Trial  by  Existence  (Poem)     .....    ROBERT  FROST 


EDITORIALS 
Degrading  the  Judiciary 
Mr.  Rockefeller's  Protest 
Cuba  and  President  Palma 
Parental  Advice 
Abbe  Klein's  Complaint 
Homicide  as  an  Amusement 
Milk  and  Alcohol  in  Medicine 


Insurance,  Financial,  Etc. 


BOOK  REVIEWS 
Robert  Chambers's  The  Fighting 

Chance 

Early  Western  Travels 
Professor  Hermann's    Book  on 

Theology 

The  Legendary  Diaz 
The  Tides  of  Barnegat 


130  Fulton  Street,  New  York 


876 


THE    INDEPENDENT 


will  not  lose  interest  in  the  little  republic 
that  was  founded  by  her  citizens.  Tho 
its  future  history  may  be  a  good  deal 
more  concerned  with  the  development  of 
the  British  colony  of  Sierra  Leone  and 
the  French  colony  of  the  Ivory  Coast,  the 
United  States  may  at  any  rate  take  to 
itself  the  credit  of  having  founded  the 
first  civilized  independent  negro  state  in 


West  Africa,  a  land  in  which,  if  the 
negro  have  but  patience  to  bear  with  us 
for  a  while,  and  with  our  help  to  frame 
a  civilization  of  his  own  to  suit  his  own 
environment,  he  may  come  to  find  him- 
self independent  of  white  tutelage,  and 
an  equally  endowed  collaborator  with  the 
Caucasian  in  a  world-wide  civilization. 

LONDON,  ENGLAND. 


The  Trial  by  Existence 


BY  ROBERT  FROST 


EVEN  the  bravest  that  are  slain 

Shall  not  dissemble  their  surprise 
On  waking  to  find  valor  reign 

Even  as  on  earth  in  para/lise : 
And  where  they  sought  without  the  sword 

Wide  fields  of  asphodel  fore'er, 
To  find  that  the  utmost  reward 

Of  daring  should  be  still  to  dare. 

The  light  of  heaven  falls  whole  and  white 

And  is  not  shattered  into  dyes, 
The  light  forever  is  morning  light ; 

The  hills  are  verdured  pasturewise; 
The  angel  hosts  with  freshness  go 

And  seek  with  laughter  what  to  brave ; 
And  binding  all  is  the  hushed  snow 

Of  the  far-distant  breaking  wave. 

And  from  a  cliff  top  is  proclaimed 

The  gathering  of  the  souls  for  birth, 
The  Trial  by  Existence  named, 

The  obscuration  upon  earth. 
And  the  slant  spirits  trooping  by 

In  streams  and  cross-  and  counter-streams 
Can  but  give  ear  to  that  sweet  cry 

For  its  suggestion  of  what  dreams. 

And  the  more  loitering  are  turned 

To  view  once  more  the  sacrifice 
Of  those  who  for  some  good  discerned 

Will  gladly  give  up  paradise. 
And  a  white  shimmering  concourse  rolls 

Toward  the  throne  to  witness  there 
The  speeding  of  devoted  souls 

Which  God  makes  his  especial  care. 

And  none  are  taken  but  who  will 
Having  first  heard  the  life  read  out 

That  opens  earthward,  good  and  ill 
Beyond  the  shadow  of  a  doubt. 


And  very  beautifully  God  limns, 
And  tenderly,  life's  little  dream, 

But  naught  extenuates  or  dims, 
Setting  the  thing  that  is  supreme. 

Nor  is  there  wanting  in  the  press 

Some  spirit  to  stand  simply  forth 
Heroic  in  its  nakedness 

Against  the  uttermost  of  earth. 
The  tale  of  earth's  unhonored  things 

Sounds  nobler  there  than  'neath  the  sun; 
And  the  mind  whirls  and  the  heart  sings 

And  a  shout  greets  the  daring  one. 

But  always  God  speaks  at  the  end : 

"One  thought  in  agony  of  life 
The  bravest  would  have  by  for  friend, 

The  memory  that  he  chose  the  life; 
But  the  pure  fate  to  which  you  go 

Admits  no  memory  of  choice, 
Or  the  woe  were  not  earthly  woe 

To  which  you  give  the  assenting  voice." 

And  so  the  choice  must  be  again, 

But  the  last  choice  is  still  the  same. 
And  the  awe  passes  wonder  then 

And  a  hush  falls  for  all  acclaim. 
And  God  has  ta'en  a  flower  of  gold 

And  broken  it,  and  used  therefrom 
The  mystic  link  to  bind  and  hold 

Spirit  to  matter  till  death  come. 

'Tis  of  the  essence  of  life  here, 

Tho  we  choose  greatly,  still  to  lack 
The  lasting  memory,  at  all  clear, 

That  life  has  for  us  on  the  wrack 
Nothing  but  what  we  somehow  chose : 

Thus  are  we  wholly  stripped  of  pride 
In  the  pain  that  has  but  one  close, 

Bearing  it  crushed  and  mystified. 

\VKST   DERBY,   N.   H. 


Literature 


The    Fighting  Chance 

THE  interpretation  which  Mrs.  Whar- 
ton  attempted  of  New  York  society  in 
"The  House  of  Mirth,"  Robert  Cham- 
bers has  really  accomplished  in  his  new 
novel*  And  it  appears  that  the  situation 
is  not  so  hopeless  as  she  represented. 
The  people  are  bad,  of  course,  but 
Chambers  shows  the  reason  why,  and  so 
at  last  we  get  the  mitigating  circum- 
stances. They  are  great  sinners,  just  as 
the  Turks  are  great  sinners,  but,  like  the 
Turks,  they  do  not  know  it;  therefore 
not  such  great  sinners  after  all.  At  least, 
not  the  morbid,  self-damned  souls  that 
Mrs.  Wharton  would  have  us  believe. 
The  trouble  with  Mrs.  Wharton  is  that 
she  has  a  literary  preacher  understand- 
ing. She  uses  humanity  for  a  text  and 
the  good  and  bad  of  human  conduct  to 
illustrate  her  preconceived  point  of  view, 
for  a  background  against  which  the  spire 
of  her  ethics  shines.  This  is  all  very 
well  in  a  sermon,  but  it  has  nothing 
much  to  do  with  a  truthful  interpreta- 
tion of  life,  because  she  understands  not 
life,  but  only  the  good  and  bad  of  it. 

Mr.  Chambers  is  not  so  much  of  a 
preacher,  and  he  has  that  kind  of  genius 
which  makes  his  mind  an  impartial  nega- 
tive of  every  line  and  shade  of  whatever 
passes  before  it  and  of  the  very  spirit 
of  things.  Besides,  he  has  a  sort  of  lit- 
erary insouciance  which  enables  him  to 
tell  with  startling  inspiration  what  he 
sees.  The  marvelous  descriptions  of 
common  and  uncommon  things  in  this 
book  show  that  he  can  describe  a  man  or 
a  world  just  as  God  or  the  devil  makes 
them  without  the  bribery  of  a  word  or  a 
sneer.  This  is  to  command  a  daring 
reality  of  expression  and  at  the  same 
time  escape  the  fever,  the  sullen  horror, 
of  realism.  The  picture  he  draws  of  so- 
ciety life  in  New  York  is  complete,  with 
its  accurate  and  elegant  imitation  of 
Englfsh  customs,  its  aquatic  phases, 
quash  galleries,  water-ball  performances, 
its  iniquities  and  dignified,  unconscious 
snobbery,  and  it  is  really  the  most  fright- 

*  THE  FiGHTiN'o,  CHANCK.    By  Robert  W.  Chambers. 
N.-V.   York:  P.  AjipU-ion  &  Co.    $1.50. 


ful  revelation  we  have  had  of  this  kind 
of  living;  but  it  will  not  appear  to  be  so 
to  the  casual  reader,  because  what  he 
has  written  is  so  embedded  in  life,  so 
much  a  part  of  the  atmosphere  of  wealth 
and  of  the  gilded  place  generally  that  it 
is  difficult  to  realize  in  terms  of  moral- 
ity what  is  really  going.  But,  primarily, 
Chambers  is  not  thinking  in  these  terms, 
he  is  catching  in  phrases  and  sentences 
every  character  line  of  the  life,  every 
color  and  charm  of  it,  the  taste  and  dis- 
tinction and  epicurean  spirituality  which 
go  to  make  men  and  women  who  are  born 
to  gamble,  drink  and  flirt,  as  others  are 
born  to  honor  and  labor  and  chastity. 
That  is  why  they  are  not  so  bad,  these 
society  people,  as  Mrs.  Wharton  repre- 
sented them.  They  are  simply  not  yet 
evolved.  They  are  the  hereditary  out- 
laws of  the  moral  order,  and  ought  not 
to  be  held  accountable  to  the  same  de- 
gree that  we  hold  Christian,  civilized 
people  accountable. 

However,  there  is  in  all  fallen  hu- 
manity a  struggling  upward  might,  and 
in  this  book  it  is  represented  by  Si  ward, 
the  hero,  who  has  inherited  an  appetite 
for  liquor.  The  tale  tells,  between  the 
orgies  of  the  other  characters  who  have 
a  greater  capacity  for  staying  sober  un- 
der inebriating  circumstances,  of  this 
man's  failure  in  self-control,  of  his  love 
and  despair,  how  he  is  never  to  con- 
quer, but  at  best  must  lead  the  camp  life 
within  of  a  spirit  on  guard.  And  from 
this  the  story  takes  its  name.  The  idea 
is  a  good  one,  typifying  all  life  in  a  way. 
and  the  author  has  portrayed  it  with  a 
fine  wisdom,  where  many  another  would 
have  given  the  neurasthenic  effect  of  fine 
nerves.  And  toward  the  end  we  come  to 
the  spire  of  the  whole  conception,  and 
showing  that  genius  always  recognizes 
the  fact .  that  the  ultimate  solution  of 
things,  the  last  stand  a  man  makes  in 
such  an  extremity  is  always  spiritual.  In  a 
conversation  between  Siward  and  his 
friend  Plant,  at  a  time  when  the  former 
is  down  and  out,  with  scarcely  a  fight- 
ing chance  left,  Siward  wants  to  know 
if.  after  a  man  has  lost  his  will  and  nervo 


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